Payday Super

What is Payday Super?

[Updated 23 April 2026]

Note: The relevant legislation passed both houses of parliament on 4 November 2025. The ATO website will contain the most current information regarding Payday Superannuation and at their request we link to that information, rather than republish.

Sybiz Visipay 26.10 (released late April 2026) is the minimum version required to support Payday Super reporting requirements. This version successfully completed ATO testing requirements on 16 March 2026 for the changes in STP reporting to support Payday Super.

With a commencement date of 1 July 2026, Payday Superannuation is an initiative to reduce unpaid super and ensure employees' superannuation accounts receive contributions in a timely fashion. The legislation passed the Australian parliament on 4 November 2025. Payday Superannuation will require superannuation to be paid at the same time as regular salary or wages, instead of the current quarterly requirements. Further, super contributions must hit member accounts within 7 business days of pay date, and super funds have 3 days to match the funds to members where auto matching fails. 

Unlike other recent initiatives, there is no scope for Payday Super deferrals. The ATO will work with employers on compliance issues before jumping straight to penalties, unless the breaches are deliberate. The ATO has published these guidelines regarding their compliance approach.

Planning ahead

There are steps Sybiz Visipay users can take now ahead of Payday Super to prepare for its future implementation:

• Upgrade to Sybiz Visipay 26.10 (released late April 2026). This is the minimum version required to support Payday Super reporting for Single Touch Payroll.
• Sybiz Visipay 25.10 has added a flag to designate pay items as Ordinary Time Earnings. Note that the name of this flag has changed to Qualifying Earnings (QE) from Sybiz Visipay 26.00. Pay items should be reviewed to ensure they are flagged as required. Any pay items previously flagged as "Superannuation: Does Apply" will be flagged as QE.
• Review pay items director's fees, and bonus and commission pay items regarding the applicability of super and Qualifying Earnings. Any pay items that are not Qualifying Earnings but you wish to pay extra super upon should have their Qualifying Earnings flags unchecked.
• Review your pay frequency as it may make sense to change to a less frequent payroll to reduce the administrative burden.
• Make plans now to move away from the Small Business Superannuation Clearing House, which will cease operation on 1 July 2026.
• Be aware that the Maximum Super Contribution Base is changing from Quarterly to Annually. Sybiz Visipay 26.10 and above will automatically handle this by treating the remainder of 2025/26 as quarterly and 2026/27 and beyond as annual, and by centralising the MCB behind the scenes, with employers continuing to control its applicability at the staff type level. QE will report up to the MCB.
• The Maximum Superannuation Contribution Base (MCB) value for 2026/27 is $270,830 (based on the new concessional contribution cap of $32,500 divided by 12% with a bit of rounding).
• Out-of-cycle or ad-hoc pays have the same reporting treatment under Payday Super as they do under STP - that is they can be reported as part of your next normal pay cycle.
• Ensure you have the ability to complete Member Verification Requests for new employees and employees who change super funds (our onboarding solution will support MVR). Further solutions will become available during 2026/27.
• ATO communications may also touch on the requirement to link a SSID to your ATO records because Sybiz Visipay uses a Sending Service Provider (SuperChoice Services). A deferral for this requirement has been granted until 30 June 2027 to reduce the burden of transitioning to Payday Super.
• Review SuperStream submission responses for any uncorrected errors - some super funds will accept submissions that have incorrect details, such as incorrect member numbers, if other information is sufficient to provide a match. With tighter timelines under Payday Super, some funds may reject incorrect submissions going forward. For SybizSuper users, review completed submissions in the Sybiz Employer Portal that do not have a tick in the status indicator.
• Familiarise yourself with the ATO compliance approach.
• Beware of scams, especially if making changes to your clearing house and/or leaving changes to the last minute. The move to Payday Super has required significant investment from software developers, expect reasonable costs to be passed on to employers. As always, if an offer sounds to be good to be true, it probably is.

Items that are still 'up-in-the-air' as at 23 April 2026 (we can't link you to official ATO resources as they do not exist at this point, in some cases regulations do not yet exist):

• The ATO has not yet clarified mixed commencement dates for Member Verification Requests readiness. It could be July 2026 or March 2027 based on conflicting information.